At the beginning of this year, foreign astronomical observers observed that Jupiter's equatorial cloud belt (ez) is undergoing a rare color replacement event, and the original white cloud belt has turned brown. And now the unusual interaction between the South Equatorial Cloud Belt (seb) and the Great Red Spot has once again sparked the topic!
South African observer Clyde Foster took a picture of Jupiter with a 14-inch telescope at 23:16 on May 20.
In the past, the Great Erythema was surrounded by white cloud bands, so that the Great Erythema was quite conspicuous. Today, a dark spiral cloud band extends out of the Great Red Spot as if it had been "peeled off." These spiral cloud bands extend up to more than 10,000 kilometers in length, and about every week there are such spiral cloud bands "peeling" from the west side of the Great Red Spot and gradually dissipating in the seb.
If observed with 890 nanometers of near-infrared light, because methane will absorb near-infrared rays, resulting in the dimting of the upper atmosphere containing methane, but in the Great Red Spot strong air flow will remove the internal methane, so it is set off in the 890-nanometer near-infrared light picture. Generally amateur observers can observe visually, and can use blue filters to make the Great Red Spot and spiral cloud band more obvious.
Such "peel-off events" were quite rare in the past, only beginning to become frequent in recent years, and more recently more pronounced. With Jupiter's rush on June 10, the best time of year to observe Jupiter, international organizations such as BAA and Alpo are asking the world for images of observations to give scientists a better understanding of what is happening to the Great Red Spot.
This image of Jupiter, taken by South African observer Clyde Foster, points to various details of this cloud band.